Slashdot Mirror
Universal Sends DMCA Takedown On 1980 Report
An anonymous reader writes "For many, many years, every time some new technology has come along, the music industry has insisted that it's going to "kill" the industry. The player piano was supposed to kill live music. So was the radio. And, of course, every time this happens the press is willing to take the industry's word at face value. In 1980, the news program 20/20 posted a report all about how "home taping is killing music," with various recording industry execs insisting the industry was on its last legs unless something was done. Someone posted that 20/20 episode to YouTube a few years back, where it sat in obscurity until people noticed it a couple weeks ago. And suddenly, Universal Music issued a takedown notice for the show. Universal Music does not own 20/20, and there were only brief clips of music in the show. It appears the only reason for Universal to issue the takedown is that it doesn't want you seeing how badly it overreacted in the past."
...there's no "cover up" here at all, and the big media companies send takedown notices to just about every video on YouTube.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I changed my underwear today. Seriously this isn't news, this is happening everyday to lots of people from lots of companies
Looks like YT hasn't taken it down yet, so that bodes well I guess.
double plus good say I.
Does anyone else get a malware warning from Chrome when visiting the link to techdirt.com?
I noticed a bunch of home-filmed performances of amateur pianists playing various Mozart stuff had been taken down, because some random publishing company claimed ownership, just to plaster them with ads -- and the company gets the ad revenue.
Anybody with a brain would realize that the work is hundreds of years old, and the performance in question is owned by the poster (the guy sitting at the piano), but apparently forcing your ads onto other peoples youtube vids in this manner has become a trendy revenue stream for cocksuckers. Almost as trendy as the sucking of the cock in the first place.
The actual program in question:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vz7Z42Fl9s
There is always something that is putting the music industry on its "last leg". As technology advances, they just continue bitching and it obviously has not stopped today. I do not think the music industry is hurting too bad. Have you seen an episode of MTV cribs lately where they have musicians on there? The musicians don't seem like they are very poor (except for Redman, but nobody can predict Redman, that guy is crazy).
When you have an indoor pool and an outdoor pool, I highly doubt you are hurting from money. If the musicians are getting enough money to afford that, just think of how much is going to the company seeing as the musician only takes a small cut of what the industry makes (that is, of course the musician gets endorsements from Nike and Wheaties and stuff).
Seriously, after mp3's and torrents have faded out and the new technology has come into play, the music industry will bitch and moan again about how they are, again, on their last leg, but then we get to see the newest episode of MTV Cribs where artists show off their new Benz and Ferraris
The world is how you make it
Or maybe sending take down notices to ALL videos on youtube is just a way to cover up the ones they REALLY want to take down.
That wouldn't be the best strategy for Universal Music. It has previously been hit with a lawsuit in the Northern District of California, Lenz v. Universal , in which Judge Fogel held that OCILLA requires a copyright owner to make a fair use analysis in good faith before submitting a notice and that Universal may not have made such an analysis.
Go to keepvid.com and download a copy of that video. If YouTube does take it down, we can always post it again (on another note, I can't seem to find part 2).
The Internet Never Forgets.
Also, Universal Music are douchebags, but what's new? The douchebaggery and the lies are so obvious that it's not even worth going into it.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
They always complain about "hurting the little guy" for whatever reason, but they hate the little guy, whether it's a new artist or a smaller publishing company. I just didn't know they had always been that way. I guess their dogma won't change until they go the way of newspapers.
There is no -1 Disagree.
The music industry, like the musicians who make it up, are a bunch of lazy douchebags who wish to get paid for plunking some strings and getting all funky and such, but mostly sitting on their collective asses doing next to nothing until time to record some new caterwauling. I used to want to be in a band and wish to get paid for nothing, then I grew up and got a real job. Let's be frank; you're batshit lucky if you every got paid to make music. For every good band, there are a million shitty ones all trying to get a recording deal. The world needs ditch diggers too, and playing drums and/or guitars builds upper body strength. So, come on you long-haired douchebags, pick up a shovel and get to fucking work!!1! Metallica must be rolling over in their graves!
And now the prayer scene from National Lampoon's Vacation; "O God, ease our suffering in this, our moment of great dispair. Yea, admit this kind and decent woman into thy arms of thine heavenly area, up there. And Moab, he lay us upon the band of the Canaanites, and yea, though the Hindus speak of karma, I implore you: give her a break."
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
Why isn't there a penalty for this? There should be--and it should be equivalent to the inflated valuations they give their own content...( 25k per downloaded song, movie, etc...)
... the Carriers Of Milk In Cities (COMIC) today lashed out at refrigerator manufacturers and cardboard container manufacturers for "killing the milk industry".
Ferb Nordquist, the head of COMIC said in a statement that was hand carried to every major news outlet, "We, the milk carriers, bring milk to the masses. Without us, there would be no milk. The refrigerator and cardboard manufacturers are putting a stake in the heart of the milk industry. This is really the beginning of the end for milk."
No cows were available for comment.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
It is perjury (a criminal act) to issue a DMCA takedown request when the requester is not the rights holder or their designated agent.
So what content are they saying they are a rights holder/agent of?
C//
Maybe this already exists, and if it does I would like to know about it. What about a site where you can download music, and the artist directly gets the proceeds from the sale? We download from Amazon right now, and my assumption is there are more than one "middle man" skimming from my 99 cents. A site such as this would allow artists to get paid more for their work and begin crippling superfluous organizations such as the RIAA, etc...
Thoughts?
I recently came across an old copy of Modern Recording magazine from early 1981. There is an article about how cassette decks are evil and home taping is hurting the record industry and the RIAA commissioned a study that that they hoped to take to congress as proof that new laws were need.
But a funny thing happened. The report was shelved when it revealed that people who owned home recording equipment spent 75% more money buying music than people who didn't own an evil cassette deck.
Then you'd see first hand from the late Mortimer I. Luddite III with his frantic pleas to stop those infernal horseless carriages from destroying his buggy-whip business he made just days before being struck down and killed by a Model T going a whopping 10 miles an hour through the town square.
Innovation and progress is only good so long as the established powers that be profit by it.
The player piano was supposed to kill live music
Live music used to be all around; families and friends would gather in the living room and listen; saloons and restaurants would have pianists in the corner. After the player piano, hardly anyplace has that.
Wikipedia's article about Epitaph Records claims that Epitaph is about to land a distribution deal with EMI. Is EMI noticeably less evil in this respect than Universal? Has it cleaned up its act since the "DIY not EMI" days?
There is always something that is putting the music industry on its "last leg". As technology advances, they just continue bitching and it obviously has not stopped today.
And the retarded thing? Advancing technology makes them money.
Consider the 90s, which they seem to conveniently peg as their baseline for normal. Putting their cries of poverty from today and the 80s together, they've been going out of business constantly from 1985 until now, except for the mid 90s. What happened then? The CD came out. And people replaced a helluvalot of vinyl and tapes with CDs. People did that because the product was significantly superior in nearly every way (with apologies to audiophiles who love vinyl).
So what's different now? Well, they've been fighting digital distribution tooth and nail to combat privacy (ostensibly), preferring to stamp out piracy even if it means killing themselves. As a result they've made a lot less money than they could have, and have allowed a robust black market to blossom. That's bad for them, not just because of the lost revenue (let's concede they lose some money for the sake of argument), but they also lose control over distribution. This is completely different from their mistakes before.. Previously, people bootlegged tapes to make illegal tapes, but it was an inferior product to the legit copies, and probably made little dent in sales. Now, people can bootleg CDs to make digital copies, shifting media as well as creating a potentially superior product. The black market can now fill a market they've chosen not to compete in. Bad news for them.
So what's the upshot? If they want to make money like in the 90s, they need to give people a reason to re-buy music. That will be very hard since the last iteration was digital and easily turned into other media - how do you improve on that? They need some way of adding actual value to the product that people bought or shared/stole. Otherwise, the level of sales growth seen now and in the 80s is the norm, and we shouldn't expect anything different.
the Streisand effect
Well, that's just great. If you hadn't said anything, this phenomenon could have remained in relative obscurity. However, because you brought it up, now everyone's gonna know about the Streisand effect. Way to go.
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
Is there a mirror of it? It doesn't have to be on YouTube either. :P
Hmm, this video story reminded me of Boing Boing's mention of a two parts YouTube video story (about 18.5 minutes in total; #1 (here, here, or here) and #2 (here or here) showing "60 Minutes" on video piracy from 1978.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I have that song on casette-- bought it used from a brick and mortar store. Great song. The movie is not the same without it. ;)
Perhaps I'll rip and post at some point
Download and mirror!
Keep your eyes to the sky.
Can someone please explain to me how a news story is copyright circumvention device? This is censorship and most courts would view this action as illegal. Posting Decss a decade ago I can see is an actual device because it can be compiled (still pushing it since its code) but this is just going to far. Sigh
http://saveie6.com/
Those Mozart pieces of music are in the public domain. If someone performs a musical piece from that era that works then automatically becomes copyrighted--only that performance and not the actual work that it was based on.
The score you are using is probably not a facsimile in Mozart's own hand.
If it was, you might not be able to read it correctly.
You might not have the period instruments needed to play it correctly.
What you are more likely to have is a scholarly edition for the professional musician or a fairly modern transcription or arrangement for the amateur - both still under copyright.
Every few years the industry is falling apart only to reinvent itself. People in the industry think everything is in decline when really styles and experiences are passing them by. The industry has continually reinvented itself. There are no more supergroups of the 1960s (think Beatles or Monkeys) for example but there have been echos of that in the boy bands. So if you are still trying to make a boy band you missed the train. The new business strategy is to capitalize off of VEVO and iTunes while getting another income stream through Live Nation. If you are a music exec still counting CD sales you are a dinosaur - extinct. That being said, we are in a lull between new music genres as hip hop has matured and the next 'big new thing' for the 2010s hasn't emerged like hip hop was for the 2000s, alternative was for the 1990s, new wave was for the 1980s or disco was for the 1970s.
Mirror:
http://plunder.com/bfe00c693f
I just watched the whole thing. It's a feature on the potential of music videos and the viability of videodiscs (large optical (?) discs containing mostly music videos). The report starts off with some worry over a slump in the music industry, and briefly mentions home taping, but that's one of the few times it's ever mentioned. The entire rest of the report talks about what these new-fangled "music videos" are, and whether videodiscs can ever take off, considering people's limited patience for watching a few minutes of video over and over and over. It's interesting in its own right, but this Slashdot story is completely misleading. If the music industry is "worried" about a few seconds (literally) of incidental hand-wringing buried in a longer report about something else entirely from 30 years ago, these people are insane.
Lucy and Ramona and 'Sunset' Sam will take down the RIAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The advent of the microphone and the radio really did murder the music industry. There was a time when the first item you saw when entering just about any store was sheet music. That was a dead industry due to the microphone and radio. Then the family bands vanished which limited the renewal of new musicians entering the field. The orchestra pits in theaters vanished when the film industry figured out how to record sound on film. Large dance and night club bands became a thing of the past due to the microphone.
Lately school systems have almost abandoned school bands to restrain expenses therefore that source of musicians is now history. We also see only wealthy youngsters going to college and conservatories as the pay for musicians can not justify the cost of their education.
And it goes further. We now have lost our instrument factories to Japan, China, Taiwan and India. The historic giants in brass instruments such as Conn, Olds and King now all belong to Steinway. Electronic alternatives to traditional instruments are also steering musicians away from brass and woodwinds. Very few people could even name one current American maker of woodwinds much less any substantial such enterprise.
In other words the music industry is is deep, deep trouble.
As they say, hindsight is ... *gets shot*
(Okay, the recording industry could be right... they claimed back then that "something MUST be done", but they never claimed that something "is NOT currently being done". After all, thirty years later, we now have all these stupid copyright laws...)
Pet peeve: Profane people propagating perfunctory pedantry.
...was to cover up the HORRIBLE taste in clothing of all of the record execs in 1980. Just wow.
A distribution deal seems like it would be less of a screwjob than a 360 or even a standard recording contract. Since a major problem with the major record labels is shitty contracts, this problem is thus alleviated.
Another suggestion, perhaps: SideOneDummy (speaking of which, FM in a music sense could also stand for Flogging Molly, one of the biggest names on the aforementioned label.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Crappy product.
Ask Me About... The 80's!
And (some) of those people left unemployed by new technology find something else productive to do, that other stuff amounting to the true bonus of the new technology. (Well, that and there are some jobs related to the new technology itself)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Not that I want to ever agree with the recording industry or anything... but they really are dieing this time. And I'm glad.
the next 'big new thing' for the 2010s hasn't emerged like hip hop was for the 2000s, alternative was for the 1990s, new wave was for the 1980s or disco was for the 1970s.
For the 2010s, I nominate what I call "electro-dance-pop", pop music with a heavier slant towards electronica-ish production
Irish Punk/Celtic Rock as a secondary trend on the indie side of things, too?
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I just watched that and it wasn't about home taping, it was about laser discs being the future of the music industry.
No sig today...
Please do. I've dug around for an ISO of the real film, unsuccessfully. It was released with "Signifying Rapper" intact on VHS and, I believe, laserdisc... but I don't think any DVD release has had it.
Breakfast served all day!
It appears the only reason for Universal to issue the takedown is that it doesn't want you seeing how badly it overreacted in the past."
Do people really think that this was an order from the upper echelons of Universal, terrified that people may see how they overreacted? I just seem to have this image of a board meeting where the chairman says "Next on the agenda - our 1980's anti-piracy advertising is on youtube", and another board members scream "Oh my god! We must destroy it!"
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=MQRB8ZZO